Driving Down The Same Streets, But In A Different
by Auroura
Summary: Connections. Closeness. Rebirth. Kaworu/Shinji/Rei, implied future Shinji/Asuka, if you squint.


Title: Driving Down The Same Streets, But In A Different Car  
Characters/Pairings:Kaworu/Shinji/Rei, implied future Shinji/Asuka if you squint.  
Summary: Connections. Closeness. Rebirth.  
A/N: Anime verse, EoE; in which I smile, wave, and ignore science. Inspired by the kink meme, a brief Eva writing discussion, Kaori Yuki, and continuously looping old-school Killers. Avian references are due to me being a ridiculous fangirl.

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Driving Down The Same Streets, But In A Different Car

"You don't want to be one?" Ayanami asks him in the shallows, eyes focused on his face. There's no negative tone to her voice, though; while she's calm as always, he thinks he can detect a tone of interest underneath.

"...No," Shinji replies, after a moment, and the words feel right in his mouth. "People should be individuals."

"Being separate means that there's a chance you'll be hurt again," she says, even as Shinji feels their legs forming apart from one another.

"Yeah, I probably will," he agrees, starting to sit up. "I'd like to be close to other people, but I want to be able to say I did it myself." Her head tilts just a fraction as he says this, and Shinji wonders if she's glad to hear it or not.

"That's a good thing to want," a voice drifts into his ear from behind, and Shinji's gaze traces from the pale hands wrapping around his middle up to the pale silver hair and a second set of red eyes, amused affection clearly visible. "It's important to remember that people can be close while still being individuals." Kaworu-kun's breath is warm on his ear, and Shinji realizes belatedly, with too-warm cheeks and the slightest hitch of his breath, that their three /individual/ bodies are not wearing clothes and are thoroughly entangled with one another.

Ayanami doesn't say anything when he looks at her for confirmation, but she understands all the same and doesn't need to speak. Her smile is something small and understated; he can tell she means it just as much as Kaworu-kun's lazy, catlike grin.

"Okay," Shinji says, after a length of time he somehow can't define, "yes."

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This should feel weirder than it does, probably, but the three or four inches of water around them feel clean, and the caresses on his skin are light and gentle. He almost tenses when Ayanami guides his hands to cup her breasts and run his thumbs over her slowly hardening nipples, but Kaworu-kun's own hand making nonsensical patterns down his side and his mouth slowly counting the vertebrae down Shinji's neck help relieve some of his nervousness. And then the other boy's hand slowly wanders a bit lower, and Ayanami makes a pretty noise against his mouth, and Shinji feels heavy and light and thinks that more of the same would be a very good idea.

Shinji thinks that he's started to lose sense of time, but when Ayanami shivers slightly as she moves around him, cheeks dusted pink, and when Kaworu-kun is a steady presence at his back, moving within him in time with their quickening breaths, he supposes that it doesn't really matter. Their movements are sloshing the shallow water around them, slowly washing some of the sweat off, and they're warm and close and are not moving /fast/ enough. And someone's babbling something that doesn't really make sense, and someone arches with a curl of the toes, and one of them is humming off-key, but it doesn't really matter which of them is doing what anymore. And then one of them tightens against Shinji and he's gone, in a white-noise static that's not unlike the space at the end of a cassette, and he thinks he can feel them changing the tides.

Afterwards, when they're tired and slightly sore in all the most wonderful places, draped on each other in a languid sort of way, Shinji doesn't feel any more enlightened than he was before. The world of grown-ups that Misato-san had talked about doesn't seem any closer or more decipherable than it did however long ago she spoke to him, but Shinji figures absently that those kinds of things might be things that are supposed to take some time.

He's happier, though, and thinks that should count for something.

"We'll always be with you," Ayanami says, before her and Kaworu-kun leave; she's a little too serious, but her hand is resting comfortably on his thigh.

"We love you," Kaworu-kun says, simply, and nothing anybody ever says will be as beautiful. "Good luck."

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Shinji finds the egg some weeks later while looking for root vegetables, half-buried in the sand and warm to the touch. It's light gray and speckled with pale red and slate blue, and he would've overlooked it as just another rock if it hadn't been for the light glinting off the shell.

He can't help picking it up, and Asuka's frown doesn't dampen his spirits once she sees he's brought something back that isn't dinner.

"It's a baby," he says.

"No, it's not," Askua retorts. "I hate babies; it's an egg." She's wrinkling her nose at it, and he imagines that her gaze would be harsher if her other eye wasn't covered up by the bandage still, but she lifts her good arm and runs her fingers over the shell. In the end, he convinces her to let them keep it.

When the baby hatches, soft pale hair and wide pale eyes making him smile and catch his breath in a way he can't put words to just yet, they name her Mizuki.

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Mizuki: Feminine; Japanese. From Japanese (mi) "beautiful" and (zuki) "moon". It can also come from (mizu) "congratulations" and (ki) "hope".


End file.
